Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2012 11:17:03 -0500
From: Judith Lang <jlang@riposi.net>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Tubastraea vs. Tubastrea?
To: “Delbeek, Charles” <CDelbeek@calacademy.org>
Cc: “coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov” <coral-list@coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <3E149249-9CA9-46AB-9AF5-EC6B2A5AC85A@riposi.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi Charles,
In the early 1970’s, when Cornell University’s John Wells, at the time senior scientist scleractinian taxonomist in the English-speaking world, sent me his re-working of my re-working the Jamaican coral list that he and Tom Goreau Sr. had earlier published, I noticed that  an “a” had been added between the “r” and the “e” in both Montastraea and Tubastraea.

So naturally I wrote him to ask why.

He responded with the following one sentence on a postcard that had been printed decades earlier in Jamaica but never previously used:   “Montastraea and Tubastraea are their original and correct spellings.”

The original and correct  spellings were “reintroduced” in the Wells and Lang (1973) Appendix to his “Scleractinian Corals from Jamaica”  in the Bulletin of Marine Science.

Happy holidays everyone!
Judy